It was the second semester of my freshman year, at a college I shall not name, although people call it Cornell. I was in an advanced mathematics class, and all of the other students in it were juniors and seniors. Brilliant that I might have been, I was in over my head, so when Josh organized a study group, I was all for it.
As you may know, most math majors are men. Except for me and a few others, women and math don't mix well. This is made worse by so many people (yes, among them women) using their math talents in related fields, such as Computer Science, Statistics, or Operations Research in Engineering, or in Big Data (spoken in a deep base voice). So, there was not a lot of female demand for a class in Functional Analysis, and in fact, I was the only girl in the class.
Josh, Kevin, Ray and I met Wednesday nights, in one of our dorm rooms. Usually it was Josh's room, but when his roommates were drinking or partying or otherwise being disruptive to a study group, we would adjourn to my room, since I had only one roommate, Lara, and she had basically moved in with her boyfriend, leaving me with a
de facto
single room.
**
I had a boyfriend, Roger Owens, and we dated every Friday and Saturday nights. Friday nights we'd go to parties and dance the night away, and Saturday afternoons we would study together, then grab a bite or go to the movies, and then we'd spend the night together. Roger is good in bed, and well, I kind of like that in a man. I was quite the sexually satisfied freshman girl, and our life together was close to perfect. We were in love.
Roger liked pillow talk, and in particular, he seemed to enjoy hearing about all of my sexual escapades before the two of us met. There were not that many, since I was only just barely nineteen, and most (but not all) happened in high school and -- especially -- the summer before college began.
Roger seemed to like hearing about my one-night stands, and he found especially hot my one afternoon stand, when I fucked a guy I had only just met, at a lonely part of the beach at a lake. This was during that infamous summer just before college, when I was a wild child. The risk of being discovered while we were doing it was high, but that just turned me on all the more. Roger never seemed to tire of me recounting that story.
Roger always asked if anyone had ever watched me have sex, and I replied truthfully that no, nobody ever had. Sex for me was a private affair, and I liked it like that. Sure, I liked risk, and thought it was sexy, but in reality, I would have died of shame if anyone ever stumbled upon me in the throes of sex with a guy. No, I also replied, I would not let him video us having sex, either with a friend taking the video, or with him holding a cell phone. Absolutely not. No way. Forget about it.
It bothered me, in fact, that Roger wanted that. Yes, I was relaxed about sex, having had more than my fair share of partners at my young age, but that was not equivalent to all the perversions that Roger seemed to like to fantasize about. It was not even close.
"Why do you get so excited by me having casual sex?" I asked him, after I recounted a session I'd had in the bedroom of a friend's home during a party, back during high school senior year, when someone could have walked in on us, but happily, nobody did. I had kind of liked the guy, since he had a six-pack, and great facial hair, and it was high school, after all. Also, I was (naively) flattered that he wanted me that way. I loved being desired, and it showed. It tended to make me, if not an easy conquest, at least not that difficult of a conquest.
"It just seems so unusual to me. Most girls I've met are so damn stingy with their sexual favors. You're different and it intrigues me. Tell me Signe, have you ever had a threesome?" Roger asked.
"No, not with two men, nor with two women. Why? Do you want us to have one?" I asked. Maybe I would, after all, it's fun to try new things; but I'd only do it if Roger truly wanted it, and begged me, at least a little bit. I was guessing he wanted two women and him, of course. I had enjoyed one or two short liaisons with girls in high school, after all. What do you think goes on at slumber parties, anyway?
Roger didn't answer me, preferring, apparently, to go down on me, getting me super wet as he drove me to a climax, and then he gave me one of his great fucks. He fell asleep, and I lay awake, studying the ceiling from underneath him, and wondering about threesomes. Finally, his cock having softened and fallen out of me, I rolled my sleeping lover off of me (which is tricky in a dorm twin bed; prudence dictated I rolled him toward the wall, so that he wouldn't tumble onto the floor), and I fell asleep myself.
**
Our math study group studied hard, and even though it was three guys and me, little to no flirting took place. That was the way I wanted it, and aside from my good looks (I know who I am and how men view me; excuse my lack of false modesty), I gave the guys no reason to think I was available, and all of them knew Roger. They also knew he would hurt them if they tried anything with me.
I didn't like that aspect of Roger's personality, but I liked Roger. People are packages, and you take the good with the bad. That bad aspect of Roger worked in my favor in this case, or so I thought. Anyway, I was crazy about Roger, faults and all.
One upshot is, however, that we all got to know each other fairly well over the semester, and we all became friends. I liked the three guys, and especially I liked Josh. Sometimes I thought about if Josh and I got together, and Roger never found out about it, well.... Stop that thought!
My sister Anne-Marie had always said that there was no such thing as a male friend. She's already a college graduate, and she's wise, so she should know. Anne-Marie claims there's always sexual tension between a heterosexual man and a woman, no matter what. It may be repressed, and not at all obvious, but it's there. I figured she was wrong in the case of my study group. Looking back, it's amazing how capable of denial one can be. My capacity for naïve innocence is truly unbounded.
When the big exam came, it being the final, Josh and I both aced it with grades of A+, Kevin got an A-, and Ray, who might have failed were it not for our study group, ended up with a B. We were gathered where the grades were posted, our names being hidden for privacy reasons, but we all had secret numbers corresponding to who we were. We discussed how my tutoring session on all the different possible variations of the Hahn-Banach Theorem had been a key part of our success on the exam.
I have an uncanny way of reading professors, and I figured the Hahn-Banach Theorem would play a central role on the final exam. I also knew the professor had a fetish for the dual space of the Hardy space H-1, it being BMO (functions of bounded mean oscillation). I explained my thinking to our study group, and I like to think that's why the four of us all did so well.
Ray and Kevin, especially, were thrilled with their successes, as were we all, and I proposed a party, just the four of us, to celebrate our collective success. Josh and Kevin wanted to bring their girlfriends, and Kevin suggested I bring Roger, but I said no, let's just make it the four of us. Ray didn't have a girlfriend at the time, and I didn't want him to feel left out, sweetheart that I am. I actually am a bit of an empathetic friend, you know.
We met in my dorm room, and we had French Champagne (since Kevin comes from money), as well as beer, wine, and tequila (with fresh limes, and salt, of course). We also had some weed, and my current favorite, CBD gumdrops from Lord Jones. We were feeling no pain, except for me. I think I had been tense about exam period, or something, since I had stabbing pains in my neck.
Josh said it was probably due to how I had slept, and that he had taken a summer course at Ithaca College where he learned the basics of giving a massage. I lay down on the floor on my stomach, after getting some fancy Santa Maria Novella Cosmetic Vitamin Oil, imported from Italy, that my grandmother gave me when I left for college. I hadn't used it yet, as it was so fancy I found it intimidating. Josh used it on me happily, though, and he went to work massaging my neck. It felt divine. He asked me to remove my blouse, and since my bra was opaque and covered my boobs even better than my bikini did, there was no real risk, and I quickly removed my blouse. He spread the oil all over my upper body.
I was drunk, stoned, and had eaten too many gum drops (the daily recommenced dose is one), so I was in a silly sort of happy mood and, I suppose, my judgment was impaired.
Josh extended the massage to my shoulders and upper back, and then he wanted to remove my bra, to get "unfettered access." I stayed silent, and Josh muttered something like "
qui tacet consentire videtur